Wall Street was up Thursday, yet CNBC commentator Jim Cramer’s stock took another beating from Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart – this time in person.

"I understand that you want to make finance entertaining, but it's not a … game," Stewart lectured the “Mad Money” host in their much-anticipated confrontation on “The Daily Show,” Stewart’s faux newscast.

“I can't reconcile the brilliance and knowledge that you have of the intricacies of the market with the crazy bull … I see you do every night."

What had been touted as the “week-long feud of the century” culminated in a dressing down of CNBC and Cramer by Stewart, who blasted both for cheerleading the market rather than exposing the underpinnings of what would drive the economic downturn.

Stewart said CNBC could be “an incredible tool of illumination” but what the NBC Universal financial news cable network did in the run up to the downturn was “disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.”

Playing clip after clip of a 2006 interview not intended for television in which Cramer spoke of ways the market can be manipulated, Stewart said, “I want the Jim Cramer on CNBC to protect me from that Jim Cramer.”

Stripped of his loud, arm-waving hyperbolic TV persona, Cramer tried to defend himself, apologized for some mistakes and said he would try to do better.

Cramer had warmed up with another Stewart earlier in the day, visiting daytime TV’s “The Martha Stewart Show,” hosted by white-collar criminal Martha Stewart. Jon Stewart showed a clip of Cramer pounding dough with the kitchen queen, who urged him to pretend it was the comedian.

Comments

Of course Stewart won..it was on homeground. The whole thing has come off as a class warfare thing where its wall street vs Main street. Carmer did those vidz on purpose to reveal the shenanigans yet he's being roasted for it. C'mon!

Silly kids like you show how clueless and ignorant many American remain. I'm sure you pray at the altar of Reagan, remained a Bush lover for 6 of his 8 years and left your fiscal conservative roots in the 90s.

Stewart spoke the truth as to the Wall Street games that were played with average Americans 401(k)s. And I'm sorry to tell you but the results back up his facts.

CNBC and the other financial news networks are cheerleaders for wall street and Stewart is right for calling them on it. Who buys advertising on these networks? Financial institutions and brokerage houses do, small investors do not. They aren't about to bite the hand that feeds them. All they do now is whine that Obama doesn't make keeping the daily stock prices up his #1 priority. It's that kind of all-for-today mentality that got us into this mess in the first place.

It is interesting that "comedians" like Letterman and Stewart can speak the truth to the Cramers, Limbaughs, McCains, O'Riellys and other BSers of the world while "journalist" can't get beyond the veneer of politeness they have been trained to maintain and ask real questions.

"Of course Stewart won..it was on homeground. The whole thing has come off as a class warfare thing where its wall street vs Main street. Carmer did those vidz on purpose to reveal the shenanigans yet he's being roasted for it. C'mon!"

But russjam, that was Stewart's whole point. Cramer KNEW better but wasn't using his influence within CNBC to have the network better expose this. Stewart was never about nailing Cramer - he was calling into question all of CNBC's exhortation of the market while people in the know, employed at CNBC, did nothing (or, at best, little) to call attention to the serious flaws they knew existed. What does it say about CNBC when the only way they even obliquely acknowledge not having done what should be one aspect of their role - keeping a bright light of truth on all of the financial reporting - is to be forced to respond to sniping from a comedian hosting a faux-news show at COMEDY CENTRAL? Shouldn't a REAL financial news network be LEADING the charge on this stuff, rather than being embarrassed into trotting out a human target (Cramer) after being shown to be complacent?

And, of course, here you have Mr. Stewart (perhaps unwittingly representing too awful many Americans on side streets & forgotten byways) speaking humorous truth to the bombastic, corrupt power of plutocrats and their yes-men.
Why did THIS take sooooo long, eh?

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Jon Stewart playing the tough guy for the OA. Read all about it!

What a friggin joke. Stewart was on the war path looking for someone to blame and guess what, there's no one to blame except ourselves.

What's the first thing that you read when you put your money in the market? The funds are not protected. There's no gaurantee that you will see a return on your investment. Sorry but it's true.

Do you also know why that no one's been arrested yet? No laws were broken, that's why. This is not the Madoff Ponzi scheme, this is us investing in "reputable" firms/funds that folded like cheap suits after the implosion on Lehman Bros. Sorry but true.

Stewart is playing the blame game (like the OA has at every opportunity) to try to keep us riled against "the man". Here's a clue, it isn't working. You can pass blame for only so long. Eventually, you have to come to the realization that you've been had. Then you reassess how you got into this crud and you make sure that it doesn't happen again.

Has anyone heard from Geitner about the OA's proposal's to modify the parameters of the banking industry? Anyone? Oh that's right, we've been trying to keep the program running because we want to be an exclusive consumer/user nation. we want to keep borrowing money from countries so that we can keep buying the products that they make.

Sorry, I digressed.

Stewart needs to realize (as we all do) that Cramer (like Stewart) is nothing more than a media Joe who's primary goal is to attract an audience. If you don't like what the dude is saying, turn them off. it's that simple. In the meantime, we all need to go back to our 401k's (or what's left of them) and make sure that our money is going to a proper account/fund. One that is not as risky, and perhaps be a little more investment wise.

I thank Stewart for calling attention and criticism to the quality of business reporting. I do think Cramer acknowledged that he and his network need to improve the quality of their reporting. Now I would like to see the improvements happen. It would be nice to see reporters, newspapers, and the media find the truth instead of always providing opinion. Save the commentary for a well-written and well-reasoned editorial. Save the blog for your personal life. I subscribe to learn hard facts about the world. I'm not going to pay for an abundance of opinions.

Cramer DID give a warning! Did you forget about his meltdown that the whole house of cards on mortgages was going to collapse and Bernake wasn't doing anything about it? He said his sources said it was the worst they've ever seen. That was many months before the crash came. (I think it was more that the Fed money policy wasn't giving Wall Street enough money to save themselves.)

I think if you watch the whole unedited video you will realize its less of an arguement or debate and more of a conversation. There really wasn't a winner or loser. I think it was edited so it was entertaining. I love seeing things like these, I love politically smart people (not just democrats) having intelligent conversations and not doing the fox news oreilly school argueing where you just yell over the other person till they give up

I wonder when Stewart is going to bring Barney Frank on his show and hold him accountable for his insistance that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in good shape just a couple of months before they became penny stocks.

ethan. I believe you have missed the boat. Yes, Americans overspent, yes American ignored warning signs. But the vast majority of those watching the news trying to see where to invest their money or where was the best spot for their 401k funds, did not take out, nor loan, nor have any part of the bad decisions that brought us to the current downfall of our stock market.
The ownership does not rest on my personal soldiers, for now, I am still solvent and I do think it is right to task those to task who either lead us here or manipulated a sitation for their own gain at the detriment of others.

About this blog

This is an expansion of the Chicago Tribune column I have written since April 2005, and the columns I wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times and Los Angeles’ Daily News for two decades before that. It’s TV, radio, newspapers and whatever, both locally and nationally. Beyond sharing what crosses my desk—and my mind—this will be a venue for you to share your takes with me as well as with each other. About Phil Rosenthal